J. Wayne Leonard, the chief executive of New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., has upped the ante on his demand that the federal government and his fellow major industry executives deal with global warming, abandoning support for a national carbon emissions "cap and trade" program in favor of a per-ton fee on carbon emissions. The carbon fee would be levied on all carbon emissions to provide a financial incentive to reduce emissions, with money from the fee used to reduce the national deficit and help low-income families, Leonard said. Some of the money from the fee would be funneled into support for research and development of carbon reduction technology and alternative energy.

Entergy CEO Wayne Leonard is encouraging the government and his industry peers to deal with global warming issues.

Leonard had long supported unsuccessful efforts to get Congress to adopt some form of carbon cap and trade initiative, where the federal government would enforce a slowly lowering cap on emissions, with some companies selling reductions beyond their cap levels to others that were likely to violate the cap.

In an emotional speech to executives of the National Wildlife Federation on Friday night, Leonard said his controversial support for what would amount to a carbon tax stems from his attempt to face his own mortality.

"You start to find yourself posing the question of 'After I die, what?', and then it really starts to dawn on you that the real question is, 'Before I die, what?,'" he said, in accepting an award from the federation for his company's environmental programs.

"I can think of no time in history when the planet is in as much peril as it is today," he said. "We were not supposed to be facing the possibility of mass extinctions in anybody's lifetime ... but here we are."

Leonard dismissed as a "trick answer" the arguments of critics of climate change science that it's uncertain whether the effects of global warming will be good or bad.

"What we can't be certain about is how bad is it going to be: Are we going to end up with 25 percent of species extinct? Or 50 percent? Is man going to be one of those species?" he said. "There are no good outcomes at all," he said.

The United States, as the greatest historical producer of carbon emissions, which helped build the world's largest economy, has a moral duty to lead the way in reducing those emissions, Leonard said.

"Every single ton that's put into the atmosphere is just going to have to pay its own way, a small fee for every ton," he said. "People are going to argue that there are losers in that. Well, there have been winners for decades, because they've been putting it out there for free.

"We have to get started or we will end up doing a lot of triage, trying to decide between who lives and who dies, what species do we save, what cities do we save," he said.

The carbon fee would be an insurance policy aimed at rapidly dropping the emissions blamed with increasing the average temperature of the world's land and atmosphere, which are linked by scientists to increased melting of glaciers and icecaps and rising sea levels that pose a direct threat to south Louisiana, he said.

"Buy some insurance for your conscience. Buy some insurance for your soul," he said. "Buy some insurance so you're not laying on your deathbed with regrets.

"We're all going to be laying on our deathbeds with some regrets, but you don't want to be laying on your deathbed with regrets about things you did to somebody who was innocent," Leonard said.

In the case of global warming, the innocent are likely to include residents of south Louisiana and other coastal communities whose lives will be disrupted by sea level rise and other climate change effects, and by the loss of species, he said.

Entergy is the second-largest generator of nuclear power in the United States, but its 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity includes several generators that use hydroelectric power, and coal, natural gas and other carbon-producing fuels. Its two Louisiana subsidiaries sell retail electricity to the majority of the state's residences and businesses.

The wildlife federation award was given to Leonard for a variety of climate-change projects, including being the first electric power company in the nation to establish and meet a voluntary target reduction for carbon pollution and establishing a $30 million fund to pay for carbon reduction projects, said Larry Schweiger, federation president and chief executive officer.

The company restored 5,700 acres of marginal cropland in the lower Mississippi River valley by planting native bottomland hardwoods, donating some of land to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for expansion of wildlife refuges. It also has planted bottomland hardwoods on 3,200 acres of its own land, with both sets of projects acting to reduce carbon from the atmosphere.

The company also underwrote a $4 million study of the ability of Gulf Coast communities to remain resilient in the face of climate change risks, including sea level rise and changing weather patterns.

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3327.